ATMs provide banking customers with the ability to withdraw funds, deposit funds and access bank account information. Because of their highly automated functions, ATMs are generally able to operate without the supervision of a human clerk. As a result, many ATMs are located in a variety of locations remote from banking centers. For example, ATMs may be placed on street corners, at convenience stores, supermarkets or sports arenas. This wide variety of ATM locations provides banking customers with quick access to cash and bank account information in multiple locations.
However, the lack of human supervision at the multiple ATM locations creates the risk of the security of one or more of the ATMs being compromised.
Customer behavior at an ATM may also create opportunities for persons with malicious intents. For example, when a customer is in the middle of a session at an ATM, the customer may become distracted. Further, the customer may abandon the ATM session prior to termination of the session. Such abandonment may occur while the customer is still authorized to perform additional functions on the ATM. A person with malicious intent who is standing nearby may, in the absence of the customer who initiated and validated the ATM session, take over the ATM session and perform actions on the customer's account such as, for example, removing money from the customer's account, transferring funds to a third party account, paying bills from the customer's account, etc.
While ATM's typically cancel authorization after a certain time period, this safety mechanism may be insufficient to prevent some theft. Therefore, it is desirable to provide systems and methods to reduce the danger to a customer from the customer's own inattentive behavior at the ATM. Specifically, it is desirable to provide at an ATM continuous security during the maintenance of an ATM session.